F 158 
.37 

.B4 
Copy 1 




Jc<-f j^(5+^/ 






,The City of Philadelphia 



AN ADDRESS 



])BLIVEKED AT 



THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, 
JACKSON PARK, CHICAGO, ILL., 



Pennsylvania Day, 



SEPTEMBER 7th, 1893, 



JAMES M. BECK, 



Of the Philadelphia Bab. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

Press op Allen, Lane & Scott. 

1893. 



The City of Philadelphia, 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT 



THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, 
JACKSON PARK, CHICAGO, ILL., 



Pennsylvania Day, 



SEPTEMBER 7th, 1893 



, -"-'<^", 



JAMES m/bECK, 

Of the Philadelphia Bar. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

Press of Allen, Lane & Scott. 
1893. 



v\ 



^4 



^IX 



NOTE. 

This brief address is reprinted by request for private circulation. The 
length of the programme and the immber of speakers on the occasion 
of its delivery necessarily abbreviated it in length and matter, and pre- 
vented any elaborate discussion. Closely following Mr. Depew's eulogy 
on New York, and spoken in a city which does not permit its achieve- 
ments to be unnoticed, the address Avas simply designed to briefly set 
forth the claims to greatness of Philadelphia, which, with its modest 
Quaker spirit, most needs a quickened civic jDride. 



GIFT 

MRS. WOODROW WILSON 

HOV. 29, 1959 



THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



An Address delivered at the World's Columbian 
Exposition, Jackson Park, Chicago, III., on 

PE]Nr]^SYLYA^IA DAY, 

September 7th, 1893. 
O 

Men of Pennsylvania : 

Honorable is the privilege of participating at this noble 
gathering of nations in the exercises in honor of Pennsyl- 
vania. She is worthy of such special recognition. Apart 
from her exalted rank in the sisterhood of States, and 
measured not less by her achievements than her imperial 
resources, she is a mighty nation. Time, the great justicer, 
has verified the prediction as to Pennsylvania of its 
prophet-founder, that God would "bless it and make it the 
seed of a nation," for the " holy experiment " of Penn has 
become a glorious reality in a noble Commonwealth, whose 
star is ascendant in the constellation of the States. If the 
commercial unity or economic centralization of our time, 
resulting from the centripetal forces of steam and light- 
ning, tends to destroy the pride of State and the very idea 
of its distinctive citizenship, yet let us preserve inviolate 
our love for, and allegiance to, our mother State. From 
her five million freemen let the prayer ascend, God save 
the Gommomvealth of Pennsylvania. 

To this great fostering mother I bring this day the felic- 
itations of her eldest and fairest born, the city of Phila- 
delphia. With her million souls and two hundred thou- 
sand homes, where peace, contentment, and prosperity 
abide, she is the true American city, and the historic 
centre of the republic. What city in all the new world 

(3) 



has a record of equal glory ? Take from the history of 
our country that which was done upon her soil, and that 
mighty volume of transcendent achievement would not 
only lose its noblest chapter, but its very argument as well. 
What historically, Greece would be without Athens, Italy 
without Rome, France without Paris, England without 
London, would America be without Philadelphia. Let us 
forever reject the false and pitiful standard which measures 
the relative greatness of a cit}^ b}'' the mere number of its 
people, the extent of its area, the value of its fabrics, or 
the swelling sail it sends forth upon the high seas. These 
make not a true metropolis. We value Athens for Pericles 
and Phidias, Socrates and Plato, while the number of its 
people has been forgotten. The area and population of 
Rome in its period of greatness are alike forgotten. The 
London of Elizabeth is known to us because of Shakes- 
peare and Bacon, Jonson and Coke, while the unnumbered 
money changers, who coined their lives into yellow gold, 
have faded into oblivion as the stars melt into the dawn. 
Nations, as individuals, are only great in proportion to 
their impress on the after ages. In all that is enduringly 
great, in that which challenges the searching scrutiny of 
the centuries and advances the increasing purpose of the 
ages, " in the arduous greatness of things done," in those 
achievements which make history and lay the founda- 
tions for a better civilization, Philadelphia may, in the 
eternal tourney of fame, proudly and without fear throw 
down the gauntlet to all comers. 

Here civil and religious liberty were, if not born, yet 
nourished into sturdy life. In an age of fierce intolerance, 
when even in our new world, peopled though it was by 
persecution, the Puritan was persecuting the peaceful 
Quaker and driving Roger Williams into the wilderness, 
and the Anglican of Virginia was compelling attendance 
upon his church by cruelly drastic laws, Philadelphia be- 
came an asylum for all humanity, where every creed was 
not merely tolerated, but had an indefeasible right to wor- 
ship God in its own way and according to its own judgment. 



Here, too, the foundations of a free government, a true 
democratic Commonwealth, were laid, where, in the words 
of its frame of government, " the laws rule and the people 
are a party to the laws." Well did Penn, like Moses a law- 
giver, and like Isaiah a prophet, say : " We lay a foundation 
for after ages to understand their liberty. * * * Fq^ 
we 'put the power in the people." Recognizing that in the stern 
wedlock of necessity universal suffrage and universal edu- 
cation are inseparably united, Penn provided for a system 
of governmental education, and within one year after the 
first tree was felled on the banks of the Delaware, a public 
school was there erected. Here too, when austere Puritan 
was trafficking in human flesh, Pastorius issued the first 
American protest against African slavery. Here Franklin 
solved the sphinx-like enigma of the skies by drawing the 
lightning from the heavens and made possible the present 
and future achievements in electricity. To Philadelphia, 
American art owes its first academy, medicine its first col- 
lege and hospital, education its first public library, geog- 
raphy its first Arctic expedition, navigation its first vessel 
propelled by steam for freight and passengers, transportation 
its first experimental railway, finance its first bank, insur- 
ance its first company, and journalism its first daily paper. 
Here also was commenced the noble system of charities, 
which, as a brilliant crown of many jewels, encircles the 
brow of Philadelphia and distinguishes her above everj^ 
city in the world. 

Of the American Union, that political Messiah to all 
nations, Philadelphia is the Bethlehem and its ancient 
State House the manger. It was Penn, who in 1696 made 
the first proposition for that union, and it was Franklin, 
who in 1754 revived it at Albany. Of that epic struggle, 
Philadelphia was the storm centre. Her historic bell tolled 
for more than a decade a solemn warning to the mother 
country not to ill-treat her child, and later sounded a joy- 
ful psean of victory, as America shook off her shackles and 
took her place among the nations of the earth. It was her 
people which first heard the iron-tongued reverberations 



6 

which proclaimed " liberty throughout the land, unto all 
the inhabitants thereof," and which will ceaselessly roll 
down the ages to time's latest day. If, unlike Rome, she 
have no Coliseum, whose fall shall be her fall, yet gran-der 
than its crumbling walls is the yellow parchment in which 
men read their title clear to liberty. Should that great 
Declaration become a dead letter, free government would 
perish from among the children of men. Here met the first 
and second Continental Congress. Here Henry thundered, 
Jefferson wrote, Franklin counseled, Adams debated, Morris 
administered, and Washington unsheathed his sword. 
Within her walls is Germantown, and in her suburbs the 
waters of the Brandywine and the snows of Valley Forge 
were incarnadined with patriot blood. Here was designed, 
woven, and first flung to the breeze, there to float forever, 
the emblem of our nationality, whose silken and star- 
spangled folds wave over our vast domain, illumined 
with the glory of eternal day. Here met the Constitutional 
Convention, and, after months of travail, completed the 
Constitution of the United States, most perfect frame of 
government as yet vouchsafed to man. Here those master 
builders, Jefferson and Hamilton, Adams and Washington, 
constructed with strength more enduring than granite, "the 
indestructible union of indestructible States." In Phila- 
delphia that august tribunal, the Supreme Court of the 
United States, had its most momentous sessions, and held 
in the scales of justice federal supremacy and state sov- 
ereignty in nicest equipoise. 

When the Union was threatened, the great war President 
found no more loyal support in the broad land than in 
Philadelphia. Here he stopped on the eve of his first 
inauguration, as if to consecrate his exalted genius to the 
service of his distracted country at the birth-place of its 
liberties and the most sacred altar of its patriotism. At 
his call a mighty army sprang from her homes, whose 
courage and fortitude were such, that of the Pennsylvania 
Reserves, more than one-half fell dead or wounded on the 
field of battle. The decisive struggle of the war, which 



said to the red tide of rebellion, " Hitherto shalt thou come 
but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed," 
was fought and won under her distinguished son, George 
Gordon Meade, while the ultimate success of the great 
conflict owed much to the genius for organization of her 
McOlellan. 

It is the crowning glory of Philadelphia that upon her 
soil reunion was effected. The great warfare of men is 
that of ideas ; its battle-ground, the human soul. Of these 
tlie roar of cannon is the outward sign, the array of armies 
the outward show. The civil war neither commenced with 
Sumter nor ended with Appomattox. It existed in the 
minds of our countrymen, and estranged them a half a 
century before, and raged in their souls long after Lee 
placed his sword in the hand of the chivalrous Grant. 
Over ravaged fields, desolated homes, and new-made graves, 
North and South gazed at each other with a hatred ill- 
concealed, which was the more intense because it was 
fratricidal, and a seemingly impassable gulf of blood sep- 
arated them. Thus the approaching centenary of the re- 
public found only sectional acrimony in our country. Then 
it was that Philadelphia revived the recollections of the 
time of real union, when Adams and Jefferson, Franklin 
and Washington stood shoulder to shoulder in defense of 
American liberties, and invited both North and South and 
the nations of the earth to be her guests. Unaided by the 
gift of a single penny from the National Government, in 
the period of prostration following a great panic, and with 
little real co-operation from sister States, she held her ex- 
hibition and surpassed all that had gone before. To its 
wondrous influence we owe a nascent American art of 
whose first fruits, as seen in yonder gallery of art and the 
noble peristyle, a Phidias might be proud and a Michael 
Angelo envy. The City of the Centennial this day sends 
its greeting to the City of the Quadri-Centennial. It en- 
vies not the superior beauty and extent of this present ex- 
hibition, but claims that they are the ripened fruit of the 
epoch-making Exposition of 1876. Moreover, Philadelphia 



may proudly claim that the Centennial Exposition will 
have forever a moral beauty and historic importance, such 
as even its magnificent successor cannot claim, for to its 
incomparably beautiful site, a veritable " Field of the Cloth 
of Gold," whose unadorned charms can challenge the arti- 
fice of man to equal, came estranged North and South, 
and with recollections of their common glory then com- 
memorated inspiring them clasped hands in honest friend- 
ship and dedicated themselves thenceforth forever to the 
sublime work of creating a new and united America. Do 
you seek that new America, which asks in the words of its 
President " no allowance on the score of youth," look about 
you. This surpassing achievement of industry and art, 
called into existence as in a single night by the Aladdin 
lamp of genius, reflects its splendor which was made pos- 
sible b}'' Philadelphia. 

Blessed are the peace-makers, and therefore thrice blessed 
thou, O Philadelphia ! Upon thy soil union was born, dis- 
union combated, and reunion effected. Thy task is not yet 
done, nor limited by the oceans that guard America as 
majestic sentinels. Thy spirit of pacification, the noble 
heritage of Penn, must permeate the world. Humanity 
has supreme need of it. On the continent of Europe, 
twenty millions of men, armed with weapons that make 
them the equivalent of any previous fifty millions, are 
dedicated to the awful task of their mutual destruction. 
Should war result, it is probable that the dials of civili- 
zation will be set back a century, and it is possible that 
even as the Norse Valhalla had its " twilight of the gods," 
so the noble fabric of modern civilization, which com- 
menced with the printing press, may perish with the 
Krupp cannon. In this night of international hatred, the 
example of Penn in the founding of Philadelphia shines as 
the morning star, heralding the dawn of a better day. 
While elsewhere on the virgin continent the pioneers 
waged wars of extermination with the Indians, Penn, the 
grandest figure in our colonial history and one of the 
master spirits of all time, met the wild aborigines un- 



9 

armed, carrying in his right hand only gentle peace, thus 
demonstrating to the future ages that love is better and 
more potent than hate, reason than force. To the im- 
mortal founder of Philadelphia mankind is immeasurably 
indebted for this signal demonstration of the spiritual 
power and destiny of the race, for in treating an inferior 
and savage race as brethren he taught that the only path 
to international amity lies through justice and the reali- 
zation of the brotherhood of men. Well may Bancroft 
declare that the " sublime purpose " of the famous treaty 
was " a recognition of the equal rights of humanity," noble 
ideal, behind which, alas, the plodding world wearily and 
ingloriously lags. Dark as is the prospect of the day, when 
humanity, like Sir Bedivere, will throw away the sword 
of war, and measure its claims by the eternal standard of 
justice, and lowering as are now the war clouds over the 
whole heavens, may we not trust to that " increasing pur- 
pose " and ever broadening intelligence of successive gen- 
erations to realize the sublime ideal of Penn, even though 
it be at so distant a day that we, who are gathered here 
this morning at this peaceful pageant of nations, will 
long since have " faded like streaks of morning cloud into 
the infinite azure of the past? " At that future day— how 
distant God alone knows — it will be recognized by the 
wise and good of every race, that the angelic chorus of 
"peace on earth, good will to man," which first flooded 
the star-lit hills of Bethlehem with its divine harmonies, 
found its noblest echo from the banks of the Delaware and 
the city of Penn. 

Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, how much do we 
love and honor thee this day ! Thou comest to this great 
gathering of nations, erect and radiant, with brow un- 
sullied, and wearing an unfading laurel, and with un- 
shackled hands layest at the feet of America thy incom- 
parable gifts— liberty, patriotism, and peace. Philadelphia 
maneto ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 311 754 6 



